Can Commodities Thrive
If Rates Stay Relatively Low?

History Suggests Something Must Give,
But There's Reason to Believe in Harmony

By

Mark Gongloff

Updated April 21, 2006 11:59 p.m. ET

U.S. financial markets have been trapped in two decades this week. The stock market has partied like it's 1995 on hopes the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at comfy 1990s levels. But commodities markets have raised ugly memories of the 1970s, with crude-oil prices pushing to new all-time nominal highs almost daily and metals prices rising to levels not seen in decades.

Historically, such a rift in the space-time continuum has been painfully corrected, resulting in either falling commodities prices -- which could...